What to Teach your Dog First
There are lots of fun tricks to teach your dog. Some are fun, some help you bond, but others are essential to keeping your pup happy and safe and it’s those essentials we’re going to look at here. Once your dog has these down, you can expand and have more fun.
Remember: As long as you use positive reinforcement (ie treats, praise, and cuddles) your dog will enjoy learning and you can ease off on the rewards once they’ve got a trick down.
Toilet Training
Toilet training should start from the minute you have your fur baby in your arms for the first time. Being vigilant in monitoring when they need to go will save you effort- and ruined carpets- in the long run.
- Watch out for your doggo sniffing the ground and/ or turning in a circle (this is them checking for snakes and similar threats FYI) or curving their back into poo-position.
- Encourage them to go outside, or pick them up and take them if you can handle getting peed on!
- When they do go outside and do the toilet it’s time for big praise and rewards.
- As they get the hang of this watch out for different behaviour like pawing or barking at the door or you as a sign they need out.
If there is an indoor toilet accident, don’t penalise your pup. The best thing to do is not talk to them, let them outside in case there’s more in them waiting to come out, clean the mess, and keep watching them for next time. No punishment but no reward either.
Respond to Name
Your dog needs to know when you’re talking to them and you need them to pay attention to you. Teaching them to look at you when you say their name is key to achieving this and it’s one of the most simple and bonding tricks you can teach them.
Get a treat, sit next to your dog and say their name. They may paw at the hand that has the sweet, or try and nuzzle their head in it. They might even bark at you “give me that treat!”. This is just them trying to work out what they’re supposed to do to get the treat and your job is to teach them that the only was is by looking into your eyes. Puppy dog eyes will get them what they want for this trick.
Sit
Teaching your dog to sit is the second most important training task. Not only is this command essential for safety, it also helps with other tricks.
- Hold a treat in you hand with your arm in front of you.
- Bend your elbow, moving your hand from waist level up to face height while taking a step towards your dog.
They should keep their eyes focussed on the treat, while moving their bum towards the ground as you move forward and bend your arm up towards you. This makes them taller and keeps them close to the treat as it goes up higher.
Stay
Stay is important not just for safety but it makes other tricks more fun too. Sometimes we need to go to places that we don’t want- or aren’t allowed to have- our pups alongside us. Other times we just want to make them stay to teach them to run towards us!
To teach your dog to stay:
- Extend your arm towards them with your hand in a stop or point gesture.
- Slowly walk backwards and reward them when they stay still.
- Build on this success slowly up to bigger distances.
When they don’t stay still, move them back to the spot they were in and try again. If you keep repeating this with your hand held out authoritatively, they will eventually stay and you can reward them.
Recall
This will be easier if you’ve already taught them to stay. If you want to let them off lead, then this one is a must. Even if you don’t plan on having them off lead, it’s good to know they’ll show up by your side when you need them to.
- Put your dog in a stay position, or catch them at a moment when they’re still but not sleeping or very tired.
- Get a treat.
- Get your dog’s attention and, as they start running towards you, call out your chosen recall word e.g “come.”
- Reward them when they get to you.
If your dog doesn’t run over to you, try making the treat seem more fun by throwing it in the air or putting it on the ground.
This one really needs to be built up cautiously over a long period. Your dog needs to get used to returning when called in stressful, exciting, and dangerous situations. Long leads are great for recall training.
Heel
Don’t think you can’t start teaching your pup to heal until they’re old enough to go for walks. But remember, as with all training, you need to adapt your training sessions to increase the potential distractions for your student before you can be confident in their training.
Teaching your bestie to stay by your side and follow you can be easy if you have a calm dog. All dogs want to follow their pack, but more excitable dogs will also want to do 20 other things at the same time so can be harder to train.
To get your dog to heel:
- Holding a treat, get their attention.
- Show them the treat and hold it by your side.
- Wait for them to come over so their nose is near your hand and reward them verbally only (no treat yet) when they do.
- Once they’re at your hand, say your chosen command and start walking. When they stay by your side, following you as you move, it’s treat time!
If your dog doesn’t do as expected at any step when you’re training, just wait until they do. Remember that they’re not sure what you want from them and they might take a few minutes to work it out and try the right thing- they are still in training after all! If they try and paw or gnaw your hand, move your hand out of the way calmly before putting it back to its previous position and trying again.
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